


through the looking glass

by acrossthesky_instars



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Europe, F/M, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrossthesky_instars/pseuds/acrossthesky_instars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>clarke & bellamy run into each other a few times on their travels, and fate intervenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	through the looking glass

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even sure where this came from, but it's more than a little ramble-y. I'm so sorry.

The first time they meet, they don’t even meet.

The _tour d’eiffel_ is piercing the heavily pregnant sky, and like a balloon just punctured, rain starts to dribble down. The blonde girl doesn’t notice, save for the pretty effect it has on her photos, tracking tearstains down the wide lens of her camera. She takes a second to muse on the funny reaction the rain elicits from the tourists, who either scatter like ants from a boot or hold up umbrellas like shields, hunching into their shoulders and watching miserably from the tree cover.

She can’t hear, but a tall, dark-haired (that could be the rain) man calls out to a young girl; she must be family because no other relationship prompts quite that mix of exasperation and affection in tone. It’s not hard for anyone to see who he’s calling. There’s only one girl it could be. She spins in the torrent, arms outstretched and head tilted back so her hair streams down her back in rivers.

Clarke knows all about the past of the French monarchy, because honestly, she thinks, history and geography are married in her travels, and she thinks maybe a regal name for the photograph might be best avoided. For the girl does not look like just a girl, but a dancer, a poem, an illusion.

She looks, Clarke thinks, like an empress, delirious with joy and the smell of the misty city. _Petrichor_ , the scientist in her pipes up, _the pleasant smell_ _that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather._

The girl laughs loudly, the sound ringing like a bell that surely must echo through Paris’ ancient streets. Clarke’s camera clicks a picture.

She smiles.

She doesn’t check the screen, not yet. Besides, she knows herself and she knows photography and this particular picture will not be a bad one. And she knows rain, which doesn’t exactly mix with non-waterproof equipment for very long.

She neatly tucks the camera back into the bag that bumps against her hip, her wet fingers slipping on the zip.

When she looks up, the man has joined the girl in her dance, lifting her lightly in his arms and waltzing her as if she really were a princess in the grandest of ballrooms, the clouds merely a fresco on the ceiling. Mud creeps up their legs, spiralling and twining in step with them, but neither of them seem to notice. They do not seem to notice anything at all, besides each others’ happiness.

Clarke considers risking the storm for one more photo, but she’s already attached to the one of just the girl.

Besides, this moment is theirs alone.

 

******

 

There is no way for either of them to recognise the other the next time they meet, even without the shroud of rain blurring their features.

Here, the sun is nothing short of brilliant, blinding Clarke’s eyes behind her sunglasses and warming her skin until her peeling nose laments its rays. She’s always been one for the rain herself, but she has to admit, there’s something to be said for the sun when it’s this glorious, scorching the sand underneath her blistered toes and glinting off the cresting azure waves far into the horizon.

Not that she can really distinguish the line between the blue sea and bluer sky, and she wonders absently if even her camera could.

She looks longingly at the ice-cream shop that she stands with her back to, trying desperately to convince herself that no one needs kiwi flavour anyway.

Not on this small of a budget.

Her photographer senses are always fully tuned into her peripheries, and _click_ a snapshot mentally of the small family to her left, a sunset of sunburn and tan between them and a cacophony of smiles. Father and son share a giant tri-cone between them, while the mother deftly wipes the chocolate stickiness from the toddler’s fingers. Clarke thinks, sudden and sharp, of her parents, of her mother, whom she envisions sat sadly at home checking her phone and resenting her, and of her father, whose exact physical location she does not have to guess because she lifted a shovel of the soil that buries him herself.

‘Here’, a voice says, and it startles Clarke not because it is deep and rich and speaking English, but because it is the first voice that has addressed her personally for a time longer than she’d like to admit. ‘I saw you lusting after one, and everyone deserves an ice-cream on a day like this.’

She takes the cone the man hands her automatically, and the ice-cream is already starting to stream melted rivulets over her hand as she blinks, stunned. It’s not even a single scoop cone, one ball as luminescent a yellow as a child’s crayoned depiction of the sun beaming down on them, another the brightest cerise she’s ever seen on a cone, and a third that looks as suspiciously green as the kiwi she had, in fact, been lusting after. 

‘I hope you’re not a vanilla girl.’ The guy winks at her, before squinting and shoving his sunglasses up his nose with the hand holding his own cone.

_Excuse me?_ Clarke’s mouth opens, but still nothing comes out. Apparently her ability to articulate anything beyond a request for a hostel room had abandoned her; maybe it’d been longer than it should have been since she’d had an honest-to-God actual conversation.

‘Flake,’ she says stupidly, and then could’ve hit herself. At least the sunburn would hide any blush on her cheeks. _Get it together, Griffin._

He smiles at her easily, too easily, leaving barely a moment of awkwardness but leaning away from her ever so slightly.

‘Blake, actually. Bellamy Blake.’

‘You got me an ice cream?’ Clarke asks slowly, idiotically. ‘With a flake?’

‘I did,’ the stranger frowns. ‘It’s not poisoned, Princess. You just looked like you needed one.’

Clarke scowls, her fist clenching so tightly her cone cracks a little, and more ice cream oozes into her palm. ‘What do you want?’

Bellamy looks taken aback. ‘Nothing. Jeez, it was just a nice gesture. One tourist to another and all that.’ He glances away from her briefly, and she calms oddly out of the electric beam of his gaze. His sunglasses veil his eyes, but she thinks randomly of that guy from _X-Men_ , with the laser vision. ‘Give it to a kid if you don’t want it that much.’

She says nothing, her hackles still raised, but lifts the rainbow cone to her mouth, and takes the smallest of licks. The kiwi is, as expected, exotic and sweet and _delicious_. Everything she’d come to expect from Spain.

He smirks, and before she can react, he turns and walks away from her along the beach, his long, tanned legs eating up the sand without even a flinch for the heat.

‘Thank you!’ She calls, at last, and he glances back over his shoulder, saluting her.

 

******

 

Clarke thinks it’s a reasonably touristy thing to do, to wander through museums and art galleries, but Berlin has a seriously long list for even her to traipse through, long enough that she wonders absently how her little guidebook can contain them. She soaks up culture like a starved sponge, and gazes for hours at the paintings in the _Museum für Gegenwart_ , wishing desperately that she could still bear to hold a paintbrush between her thumb and index finger. The last time she tried, it had felt more like a weapon than the only tangible link to her father. She likes especially that the name of this one means ‘Museum for the Present’, because that is all she tries to think about these days.

She stares blearily at another burst of colour against the white washed walls, and wonders if this one comes in a postcard for Wells. She lowers her sunglasses from their perch across her blonde curls to hide her welling eyes, hoping she doesn’t attract any random tour guide’s attention with her sudden swell of melancholy. She loves the culture, but from her own shadowy corners of the room, not from a carefully rehearsed tour guide’s mouth.

Someone sidles up beside her, arms crossed and hand propped thoughtfully against his mouth. He _hmms_ pretentiously, and Clarke edges away to another painting, with no one stood near it.

But this one has streaks exactly the hue of Abby’s eyes, and Clarke suddenly just _can’t_ anymore. She spins inelegantly, looking for the exit she’d taken no note of in her ambling, and stumbles. A hand catches her elbow firmly, and rights her. She takes a second to be grateful that her sunglasses don’t slip in their defence, and peers up at the stranger.

‘Careful there, Blondie,’ he murmurs as he sets her to rights, and when he lifts his eyes to search for hers, the twinge in his eyebrow that belies his tiny frown sparks the recognition that instantly fuels her consternation.

‘Are you following me?’ She demands, snatching her arm back and rubbing her elbow like it was bruised.

Bellamy towers over her more than she’d like, looking equal parts amused and infuriated. The sunlight spills through the skylight overhead and silhouettes him exactly like a cliché, but no one would forgive her for thinking him angelic, with his diabolical curls twisting into his opaque eyes and his jawbone alone enough to slice an antagonist to ribbons. His arm still hangs, reaching out for her. She knocks it out of the way brusquely.

‘Christ, are you always this suspicious?’ He retorts, and her eyes narrow, only hearing the answer he never spoke.

‘I am of tall, dark strangers that keep cropping up seemingly _just_ to startle me,’ she snaps back, glad the voice that abandoned her in Spain has finally returned.

‘How do I know you’re not the one following me?’ he demands and he doesn’t need to see beyond the mirrors of her sunglasses to feel the spark of her fire. ‘I did buy you ice-cream.’

She snorts. ‘I’m not a child that can be lured away by the promise of more treats, believe me.’

‘I don’t doubt it, Princess,’ he smirks, ‘stranger danger, right?’

‘Don’t patronise me, Blake.’ She scowls, and lifts her chin as if to make herself look taller.

‘Well, see now you have me at a disadvantage.’

Clarke sighs, exasperated already. ‘And what would that be?’

He cocks his head to one side, almost as if he knew it would make his brown hair shine in the sunshine. ‘I told you my name, but you seem to have neglected to do the same.’

Clarke quirks her eyebrow. ‘Well, it’s definitely _not_ Princess.’

‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

‘You didn’t answer mine.’

They stand for a moment, her Converse against his worn combat boots and their eyes locked. Neither remember moving towards each other; it had been a magnetism beyond conscious thought. Still, however, Clarke toes the line of shadow, unwilling or unable to move into the circle of sunlight haloing Bellamy.

He sighs, rocking back onto his heels and crossing his arms between them. ‘I’m not following you. Us meeting again- it’s just a coincidence. Unless _you’ve_ been smitten with me since my chivalrous bestowal of iced gifts.’ He gives the tiniest of sarcastic bows in her direction.

‘Not likely,’ Clarke snaps, then takes a deep breath in. She can’t smell the paint that she searches for to calm her pulse, but the clean, sharp scent of the gallery placates her enough.

‘Apparently,’ Bellamy draws out the sounds of the single word, ‘we’re travelling the same circuit.’

‘I’m not following any circuit,’ Clarke denies, and instantly feels like a petulant child.

Bellamy raises his eyebrows, clearly thinking the same. ‘Now you’re just being difficult.’

‘I am difficult.’ Clarke steels herself against his perceptive gaze, and turns away. She wasn’t here to talk. If that was the case, her phone was fully charged somewhere at the bottom of her bag, just waiting for her to turn it on and connect.

‘Is that it?’ Bellamy calls after her, just loud enough for the tour guide nearest to them to frown warningly in his direction. And Clarke’s, as if she could stop him. ‘Fate gives you me twice, and you’re going to just ignore the gift?’

Clarke ignores him, and then pauses, just before she could walk out into the day.

‘I don’t believe in fate.’

 

******

 

Bellamy hadn’t thought about the blonde girl in months, too easily distracted with Romanian girls, and Austrian girls and, most recently, Italian girls. He avoids girls with golden hair though, except when he’s at his very lowest, when he remembers that Octavia’s studying in Paris, his mother is dead, and his friends are so far away that he’s seen the blonde girl more than he has them in the last year,

The spearmint of his toothpaste is a poor failure, unable to hide the echo of whiskey lingering on his tongue. He supposes that he shouldn’t be surprised; he drank his way through weeks of the stuff until late last night, and the claws of a vicious hangover spear viciously behind his eyes and reverberate through his skull.

He thinks that Rome is one of his favourites so far, but he knows that he has this thought through most of the places he’s visited. He loves the smell of the city, like tomato and garlic and bread (like the pizza he covets, basically), and the history worn into the steps of every street in the shape of thousands of years of feet. He even loves the scream of traffic rushing through the urban veins, and considers the idea of being sat astride a motorcycle himself, revving outrageously, finger on the pulse of the city.

He’d stopped at this particular café as soon as he saw the name- _Café Augustus_ \- and ordered the blackest of black coffees, thinking darkly that’d it’d match his soul, or at the very least, his mood. He sits at a small, innocuous table under the striped awning, reading and re-reading the first line of the book he’d yanked from the over-spilling bookcase he’d perused while waiting for his drink, _Through the Looking Glass_. He prefers non-fiction, or at the very least historical fiction, but his sister Octavia has a soft spot for the Mad Hatter, and he has a soft spot for Octavia.

With a sharp screech of metal against stone, someone yanks the partner chair out from under his table and collapses into it. A camera is placed much more delicately on the table next to his book, and he lets the pages fall shut as he looks up.

‘Maybe I’m starting to believe in fate,’ his Princess says, and he feels surprised to see her and that he would ever think of her as _his_ ; she’s the kind of free he’s always trying to convince himself he is.

He says nothing, waiting. This time, it’s up to her.

She inclines her head towards him. ‘Clarke,’ she admits. ‘My name is Clarke Griffin.’

‘Hello,’ he manages, squinting even from behind his sunglasses. He realises, in a sudden burst of the curiosity he thought he’d left with his half-finished studies at home, that he has no idea what colour her eyes are.

She takes a sip of his coffee like they’re friends, and God, it feels like he’s getting whiplash from her moods. In fact, this is the second mood he’s seen her wear; when they’d met before, she’d been nothing but belligerent.

‘Are you hungover?’ she observes lightly and laughs when he grunts at her, even though her presence is already softening the ache. She rummages in a side pocket of her camera bag and pulls out a packet of paracetamol, popping two out for him and shoving them across the table. He takes them with a swig of coffee and grimaces.

‘You’re chattier today,’ he notes.

‘I guess fate is wearing me down,’ she shrugs, ‘and Italy helps. I’ve got a scooter that tends to boost my mood.’ She smiles tentatively at him, almost hopefully, and his tired heart swells sluggishly to life. ‘Princesses know how to have fun too.’

He grins. ‘You’ll have to give me a second to wake up.’

She shakes her head, rivers of gold hair spilling around her head like the silkiest crown he’s ever seen, and downs the rest of his coffee, pulling a face. ‘No time like the present, Blake. Don’t you know travelling’s all about exploring?’

He smirks. ‘Is that a challenge, _Griffin_?’

He isn’t sure whether she moves faster than lightening, or the rashest of Italian drivers at least, or if the whiskey has finally dulled his reflexes like he’d so badly wanted last night, but her camera shutters on the moment, and she pulls it away from her face to examine the screen. She smiles, and traces a finger absently over what must be his face on the preview screen, probably not looking its finest. _Through the Looking Glass_ , he thinks.

‘Trying to get some of me all to yourself?’ He hopes she doesn’t notice the flush of rouge under his freckles.

‘Just in case this is the last time fate intervenes,’ she offers lightly, not meeting his eyes. ‘Did you know some cultures believe that having a photograph taken steals away part of your soul?’

‘Lucky I haven’t got one,’ he mutters darkly, only half joking.

‘I forgive you,’ she answers easily, and he can feel her eyes on him even though he can’t see them, like a physical touch painting a heat more enchanting than the sunlight across his skin.

‘Come on,’ she takes his hand and lifts him to his feet as if he weighs nothing, ‘we’re going for a ride.’

They drive through the lanes on the back of Clarke’s scooter, drawing their own map of the ancient city from her dog-eared guidebook and his unnerving faith in mythology and the always-turn-left method. She insists on driving first, and he lets her, knowing his masculinity is really not something he needs to worry about when she’s around. He prefers it when it’s his turn though, because of the purr of the engine beneath him but mostly for the fizz of her touch around his middle and her thighs clenched on either side of his. She laughs a warning at him when he skids around a corner too fast, but he knows he won’t make a mistake.

She seems like a different girl from the snarky one he met so long ago, as if she’s tossed a weight from her shoulders.

After a while, they both find themselves thinking the same thing, that maybe travelling alone isn’t the dream that they’d both convinced themselves of, now that they’re waking up.

‘Wait!’ Clarke cries, squeezing his abs so tightly that he nearly chokes. ‘The fountain.’

Bellamy flings the exasperated look that he’d normally reserve for Octavia over his shoulder, quick enough that the bike doesn’t even hint at swerving (he allows himself a smug grin at this), but pulls over at the side of the street and props the bike up with his leg.

Clarke climbs off nimbly, and quirks an eyebrow at him. Her voice, when she speaks, surprises him with its seriousness.

‘Are you the wish-making type, Bellamy Blake?’

Bellamy weighs her words; he thinks that Clarke Griffin is too clever a girl for him to lie to, even if he wanted to. ‘Maybe I should be.’

She digs in her pocket, and pulls out two cents, handing one to him.

‘Hey, big spender,’ he jokes, but takes the copper, warm from being sandwiched between both of their thighs. She rolls her eyes, and turns her back to the fountain.

‘Consider it payback for the ice cream,’ she murmurs, and closes her eyes while she throws the coin over her shoulder into the water with a small _plop_ , a furrow of concentration peeking out from above her sunglasses.

Watching her, Bellamy thinks that he doesn’t need to wish for anything.

But when she opens her eyes, watching him expectantly, he copies her actions.

When he looks back at her, she’s got a splash of water across the lenses of her glasses, and she tugs them off to rub them dry with the hem of her shirt. There’s a moment where he can’t take his eyes off the tiny strip of pale skin he glimpses for a second, but then he looks back at her open face.

It is the first time he’s seen her eyes without her camera or her sunglasses. And by God, if only the sky were so blue.

‘What did you wish for?’ she asks him, her tone deliberately casual.

‘Don’t you remember the rules, Princess?’ he smirks, nudging her teasingly, ‘that would be telling.’

But when she smiles at him, and swings her leg back over the bike, he stares at her, glowing as if the sun itself shines just for the chance to fall on her, and confesses silently.

_That fate doesn’t stop intervening_.

 

******

 

The heavy bassline shaking the nightclub thumps the name of the city like a dull, throbbing heartbeat. _Za-greb, Za-greb, Za-greb_.

Bellamy winces, and rubs his temples, his eyes black holes swallowing the rainbow of strobe lights. Jasper had apparently heard somewhere on his dubious grapevines that Croatia was full of Europe’s up-and-coming nightlife spots, Miller liked what he called its lack of pretentiousness and Monty had come along for the ride to keep them all on the right track, especially when he’d heard Bellamy would complete their foursome. _Like a boyband_ , Bellamy had thought.

Jasper and Monty never seemed to run out of moonshine, or energy for sleazy clubs with smoky interiors that barely hid their shabbiness, but Bellamy’s attention was starting to wane, his wandering feet beginning to twitch. He knew Miller had noticed, and as he stands on the rim of the dancefloor, he can feel his eyes drawing him from the shadows, and nods a little irritably in his direction.

‘Oh!’ a girl gasps at his side, and a pink, sticky liquid seeps into his white t-shirt instantly. The little umbrella garnish stabs acutely into his chest. ‘Ohmigosh, I’m so sorry!’

She’s attractive, he notices, in a way that doesn’t match her quaint apology and ostentatious meet-cute, with gleaming dark hair, heavily made-up eyes and pointed white teeth that glint in her wide smile.

He rubs at the spillage with his index finger, then lifts it to his mouth, and sucks it clean, satisfaction sparking when her eyes follow the movement. _Like a moth to flame_. He tamps down on a smirk.

‘Strawberry,’ he rumbles, low enough that she can separate his voice from the music bleeding from one asinine song to another. ‘Nice.’

She simpers, and it looks disjointed on her face. But he grew up with Octavia, and he knows that a warrior’s armour can be pink and fluffy too.

Her long eyelashes bat once. ‘It takes a real man to wear pink,’ she purrs, her voice lightly accented and almost imperceptibly slurred. .

He says nothing, raising an eyebrow and waiting for her to come to him.

‘I hear real men can dance, as well.’ She rests her hand on his bicep, and squeezes.

He leans down towards her, invading her space and letting his gaze rest deliberately on her chest, then her closed eyelids, then her lips. She leans into him, and his breath tickles her hair like the faintest of breezes.

And then her eyes open under his continued stare, and the disco ball overhead reflects in her dilated pupils, fracturing rays of light in exactly the _wrong_ colour.

Bellamy says yes to everyone- he prides himself on his generosity like that- with one exception. The girls with the cerulean eyes he denies himself, for his own sake.

He’s reminded of _her_ enough, whenever he looks to the sky.

He shifts uncomfortably, and lets the stuffy air slip between their bodies again. His eyes meet Miller’s across the room, and he’s there instantaneously. The girl looks drunkenly aggrieved at first, but Miller’s toffee eyes sweeten her.

And then he’s sick with the taste of his own weakness. His backpack hasn’t been fully unpacked in a long while; he’s adept at distance, if nothing else. So why does Clarke haunt him so? He’s never sure if it’s her fairy-tale hair, or her snark, or the sight of her throwing her lot in with the wishes of thousands of others, hoping earnestly. Sometimes, when the breath gets knocked out of him when yet another fair-haired stranger in the crowd isn’t her, his self-disgust theorises that the whole ‘fate’ thing is the problem, that he’s kept suspended like a balancing puppet, never knowing if he’ll ever see her exact shade of dirty yellow again.

(But he thinks it has something to do with her eyes.)

He shoves his way through the sweaty throng of dancers, unheeding of Miller’s curious glance and the abuse that gets chucked at his back. His shoulders have taken worse.

The smoking area outside is hardly less cramped than the club’s interior, but he carves a space for himself with a glare and clench of his shadow-dusted jaw.  

He wishes once for a cigarette, and then a phantom Octavia to knock it out of his hand.

Apparently, he’s not the only one.

Something careens past his tired frame, and smashes into a shower of plastic on the brick wall. A duskily blonde girl groans, and slumps further down, sat on the steps along from him, her head slumped on her knees and her arms tucked loosely around herself.

Bellamy ignores her.

Her shoulders start to shake infinitesimally, and he can’t help but look around him for her friends, a boyfriend, any other kind soul with a shoulder softer and more waterproof than his. Tonight, he’s too busy feeling sorry for himself for there to be room for anyone else.

But her shoulders arch just like Octavia’s, and his stomach has never been able to take her tears either.

He collapses his height down onto the stair above hers, and nudges his knee into hers.

‘Stop crying,’ he mutters gruffly, and she freezes, but doesn’t turn around.

‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ her voice cracks from under her shroud of hair.

Neither of them say anything, and one song crashes into the next.

‘Do you want some water?’ he tries, not having missed the slurred edge to her speech.

‘No,’ she insists.

He gets to his feet, leaves, and returns a moment later with an unopened bottle of water. She takes it, refusing to look at him.

She gulps down half of the bottle. ‘You shouldn’t accept drinks from strangers, especially in shady clubs,’ she comments, and it sounds like a parroted line. He suspects it is.

‘No,’ he agrees, having drilled the same truth into Octavia more times than he could count. ‘But even the best- or I guess, worst- arsehole would struggle to spike a sealed bottle.’

‘Still,’ her head tilts back until she can watch him upside down. ‘Stranger danger, right, Bellamy?’

His heart spasms, his blood changes direction in his veins, and his only outward reaction is a miniscule convulsion along the tips of his fingers.

‘Clarke,’ he acknowledges, working to keep his voice level. At first he thinks she notices the thinly disguised joy, because she smiles, but it’s drawn without a matching happiness. ‘It’s good to see you.’

She shakes her head, scattering sadness out of her splintered eyes like stardust. ‘I don’t think you want to see me like this, Bellamy.’

He hopes he hides his surprise; normally he doesn’t think he’d be able to manage it, but this brutally candid Clarke is one drunk Princess.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

She laughs, without humour. ‘D’you know, Bell, tonight I really did.’

He waits.

She sighs, rolling her head forward but shifting slightly so he can see the angles of her face, bruised with mauve marks beneath her faraway eyes. ‘The first time we met was what, seven months ago?’ He nods, as if he can’t recall exactly when he first laid eyes on her in Spain, frowning like a forgotten child at the ice-cream shop. ‘In all that time, I haven’t stayed in a single place longer than a few days, a week at most. My father died and my mother-‘ she laughs her broken laugh again- ‘my not-so blameless mother made a habit of pointing the finger at her only daughter. Home is where the heart is, right? Well, mine’s been ripped apart brick by bleeding brick. And Europe seemed like a good enough place to run.’

‘”Not all those who wander are lost,” Princess,’ he quotes.

‘I know,’ she allows, ‘but I am.’

He narrows his eyes at her and then rolls them so hard they almost hurt, and she can’t miss the gesture.

‘I don’t believe that for a second, Griffin. And I don’t think you do either.’

She huffs. ‘I haven’t touched my phone much, apart from, you know, the odd text to let my friends know I’m alive. But tonight I just- I wanted to speak to her. But, apparently she isn’t missing me all that much, or my father for that matter. Some _man_ ’- she spat the word- ‘answered the phone. It’s not even been a year.’

Her voice cracks and she looks down.

‘Exactly, Princess,’ he says softly, and reaches out to stroke his hand down the length of her silky hair, as if to soothe a ruffled animal. ‘It’s not even been a year. There’s no allotted time period for grief. Believe me, I’ve been there.’

Her eyes fix on his face, wide and glistening and compassionate even in her sadness.

‘My mum,’ he answers her unspoken question gruffly. ‘I don’t know her, but I’m sure your mum’s hurting too, especially if she thinks she’s lost a daughter as well. God knows, parents aren’t perfect- but don’t let yourself be the casualty in lashing out at her.’

She scowls, her fire sparking across her face and straightening her back. ‘Easy for you to say, Blake. You’ve never met my mother.’

‘No,’ he acknowledges, cocking his head. ‘But it is okay for her to try to find happiness, even if it’s with someone else. And the same’s true for you, Clarke.’

He exhales noisily. ‘I don’t know what went down with your parents, and that’s your business; there’s nothing I can say there. But I do know that you deserve happiness, too. And since your Dad’s the kind of guy who raised someone like you, I’m betting he’d agree with me.’

Clarke wrinkles her nose, and lets out a slight smile. ‘Not that you know what you’re talking about, Blake, but I think he would.’

They sit in companionable silence for a moment.

Clarke tucks her hair behind her ears, and lifts so she isn’t sat below him, but on the same stair. Their thighs meet, like kismet, and he thinks fleetingly of Italian streets and flowing pale hair in his eyes.

‘You’re _such_ a nerd,’ she bursts out, and he bows his head to hide his smile, because she might still be sad, and more than a little tipsy, but she’s herself again, and maybe he helped her get there. ‘Tolkien? Lewis Carroll? All that mythology when we were in Rome? You’re hiding the biggest brain behind those freckles.’

He snorts a laugh. ‘I read to my sister a lot, when she was growing up.’

She _aww_ s adorably. ‘Big Brother Blake, I should’ve known. What’s her name?’

He flushes, and knows she sees it because she smirks. ‘Octavia.’

Her eyebrows skyrocket, and her grin makes him want to dance more than all the pounding dance music and DJs in Croatia. In all the world, he fears. ‘You aren’t helping yourself here.’

He holds up his hands. ‘I was going through an Ancient Rome phase! Augustus was my favourite, and he had a sister, so…’

‘You’re still in your Ancient Rome phase, aren’t you?’ She teases.

He peers at her from beneath his eyelashes. ‘You tell me, Little Miss Observant. And you accused _me_ of being the stalker!’

She giggles, and it’s adorable and very un-Clarke- which apparently is an adjective in his vocabulary these days.

She jumps to her feet and claps her hands like a child. ‘Let’s go dancing!’

She drags him to his feet, and he goes along fluidly, as if he’s not just had a very up close and personal look at her shapely legs, at the black leather skirt wrapped not-unpleasantly around them.

She pulls him past the entrance back inside, and he follows her easily out into the street. He doesn’t imagine many people could not follow Clarke.

They walk comfortably for a few minutes, pointing out the twin church towers straining to pop the balloon moon, an old woman snapping linen out the window like fireworks, a fountain glowing like something from Bellamy’s tales.

It’s the last one that seems to fuel Clarke with giddiness, and she lets go of his hand (he pretends he hasn’t noticed she hadn’t until then) and kicks off her shoes, uncaring that a stiletto splinters against the cobbles as she climbs into the water. She kicks a spray in his direction, dancing clumsily.

She imitates a high-pitched, breathy voice- not unlike the girl he’s already forgotten from earlier. ‘Come on in, Bellamy, the water’s perfect...’

He barks a laugh, and toes his shoes off, propping them next to the lone heel he can see.

‘You’re a menace, Clarke Griffin,’ he says, but he never hesitates to join her. And she’s right, the water _is_ perfect.

Her head tilts as she inspects him. ‘Did you know,’ she squints, ‘you’ve got a bleeding heart?’

‘What?’

Her finger prods his chest, just over his heart, and he remembers the strawberry concoction that mars his white shirt as she traces the mark.

He shrugs. ‘Occupational hazard of offering my shoulder to strangers.’

Her lips quirk slyly. ‘I’m no stranger, Atlas, and you know it.’

He does. But then- ‘Atlas?’ he crows, ‘who’s the nerd now?’

Her crystalline eyes glow, and he’s so busy watching them that he misses her deft bend, until a handful of water hits him square in the chest.

She smirks. ‘Better get you clean, hadn’t we? You’re a disgrace to the nerd herd all over.’

He splashes her back, and her laugh has all that elation he missed earlier.

‘You’re so drunk,’ he sprays her again.

‘I know.’ She looks immensely pleased with herself, and takes a step towards him. ‘It’s making me brave enough to do this-’

Her feet slide out from underneath her, and she topples backward, her mouth a perfect round ‘O’, hands grasping for him. He grabs her, choking on amusement, and they both go down, water arching over them and cresting over the lip of the fountain like the Spanish waves.

When they come up, spluttering, her eyelashes are clumped together, and he’s close enough to tell.

‘That’s a funny thing to need liquid courage for, Princess,’ he teases, and she pouts, flicking water at him.

‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

‘Sure I do,’ he stands, and proffers his hand to pull her up, but she’s staring at the mark on his chest again- probably because, his brain whispers cruelly, that’s the only part of his shirt that’s really opaque any more. He resists the unnecessary urge to suck his stomach in.

She bites her lip. _Definitely unnecessary_.

She fits her palm into his, and he tugs her up effortlessly, but she stumbles against him all the same, just enough that he doesn’t tumble again but has to catch her.

It’s the second time a girl’s used a move like that on him tonight, and the first time it’s made his pulse ache.

They’ve tried sunny beaches, and colourful museums, the romance of Rome, and even- unbeknownst to them- the lights of Paris, but their moment had to come in Croatia, in a city whose name Bellamy had used as a metaphor for a bassline.

He doesn’t mind though, and she seems to like the fountain.

She seems to like when he kisses her, too.

She puts her cool hands on either side of his face, and her lips on his, and the fountain could turn to flames for all he’d notice. Besides, he’s already seen hell and kissing Clarke is _nothing_ like that. There’s no space between them, and he’s glad because otherwise he’s sure the air would spark. It’s like holding a live wire in his arms, and that’s exactly what Clarke is, but he must be a glutton for punishment because there is no distance between them that is small enough. Her tongue touches his, her _everything_ touches his (and he hates the almost that intervenes) and he thinks that if he’s drowning in this fountain, it’s funny how much it feels like living.

He thinks of all the places he’s visited, all the stamps on his passport. He thinks of all the sunsets he’s seen, and monuments he’s admired, books he’s read and girls he’s kissed. Nothing has ever withstood time, or rooted his size 11s, quite like this.

He’s spent a long time trying to lose himself, but it’s not until he’s lost in Clarke that he’s found.

 

******

 

Everyday Clarke wonders if she made a mistake slipping out of Bellamy’s bed before he’d woken in Croatia. The sunrise had never seemed so hopeful, or so harsh.

Everyday she finds the exact pattern of his freckles in coffee grounds, in marks on her map, in the stars she wishes on, over and over.

Everyday she hopes those stars will give them one more chance to catch each other, because even though she kind of _knows_ it was a mistake, she wants all of Bellamy’s gods and goddesses, the ones who, if they exist, thought she could handle a world without her father, to give her something back.

But lightening never strikes the same place twice, and apparently neither does fate.

This time, Clarke knows exactly how long it’s been since she’s seen Bellamy, and not just poor imitations of his features on every passer-by. It’s been five weeks, three days, and roughly three hours. She’s not so good at the time differences, but she doesn’t think it matters, considering she spends most of her waking moments alternating between desperately trying to remember and desperately trying to forget.

She’s back in Paris, something she bemoans to Wells when she finally calls him, and learns of his plans to study there, but secretly loves. It feels like hope to her, the place she started, and as she clicks back through the first photos on her camera card, she pauses on the Empress shot, and touches the outline of the dancing girl on the screen.

‘Hey,’ Wells leans in, snatching her camera in a way she only lets him do because she knows he’s so careful. ‘I know her. That’s Octavia; she’s in one of my classes.’

_Octavia_. Every single cell in her body swaps places giddily. _How common of a name can that be_?

She seizes her camera back, and zooms in on the photo, not on the girl who might be Octavia, but on the man watching her, her partner, stood in profile with his hands in his pockets in the corner of the frame.

Despite the quality of her zoom, he’s blurry. But the curve of his shoulder- she’s outlined that with her hands so many times in her daydreams- it could be him, she supposes.

‘Will you see her soon?’ Clarke asks Wells, carefully, casually.

‘Sure,’ he replies easily. ‘I think she’s in my next class. She’d love that photo- come meet us afterwards, if you want. I’ll introduce you.’

Her heart thuds shallowly in her chest, but she gives Wells a nonchalant nod and agrees.

The next few hours, she literally does nothing but turn thoughts over in her mind. At one point, she hysterically thinks she must be about to die, watching the highlights of the last few months play over and over again like a disjointed film.

And yes, of course, he’s in all of them.

The only memory she can shut down is the night they spent together in his room in Croatia (thank God he had a room), because thoughts of his skin on hers, his hands mapping their travels across her body, elicit body-wide shivers that a summer in Paris shouldn’t (and don’t) cause.

She’s a nervous wreck by the time she arrives at the café she’s meeting them at, having convinced herself that this is just one coincidence too big. But then they walk through the door, and Clarke’s roaring blood quiets, because if there’s one thing she knows with any certainty, it’s that the girl in the doorway is related to Bellamy Blake.

‘Bonjour!’ she chirps prettily, and flings herself into a chair next to Clarke. ‘You must be Clarke. I’ve been hearing all about you.’

For a moment, Clarke’s traitorous heart whispers _Bellamy_ , and then Wells sits down on her other side, and reality pervades.

‘I am,’ she says faintly, ‘are you Octavia?’

‘The one and only,’ she flounces dramatically, and smiles. This is definitely her dancer.

If she was asked to recall the small talk that occurred between the three of them in the next while, Clarke could not reproduce even a single word. She knew this, and sent a tiny thanks back to Abby, for all those years drilling her on politeness and manners.

She isn’t even sure her heart beats throughout every torturous word, because the moment she hands the camera over to Octavia at the girl’s request and she utters- probably as part of a sentence Clarke doesn’t really hear- ‘Bell,’ it shudders back to life.

‘Bell?’ she hears herself query, and if she were the superstitious type, she would cross her fingers (maybe she does anyway).

‘Oh,’ Octavia smiles, ‘sorry. My brother, Bellamy. That’s him, stood over there. Probably telling me off.’ She laughs fondly.

Clarke’s head falls forward, and _thunk_ s loudly on the table.

‘Clarke?’ Wells touches her shoulder, alarmed. ‘Are you okay?’

‘No,’ she replies, and when Octavia’s the one to ask her what’s wrong, she looks up at her, into the same unfathomable eyes she’s been longing to see, and says:

‘I need to find your brother.’

 

******

 

It was maybe a little bit too much to ask for, that he’d be in Paris, she concedes, as her flight accelerates down the runway. She supposes she’s lucky London is only an hour and forty-five minutes away, but she feels every one of those minutes like a weight around her neck.

Octavia had listened to her story with careful, devoted attention, and then a smile, and finally, with Bellamy’s smirk. She’d written the place where Bellamy was apparently working- some Royal Observatory in Greenwich- on a napkin that’d she tucked into her camera bag, and all but driven Clarke to the airport herself. Wells seemed a little nonplussed, but she hoped he was used to her by now.

Her flight went smoothly, although she thought the ladies sat on either side of her might have a complaint or two to make about her endless nervous crunching of the boiled sweets she’d bought from Duty Free, and she was kind of surprised that she’d made it through Security, if she looked anywhere near as antsy as she felt.

_If this was a film_ , Clarke thinks, _he’d be waiting at the airport. Dramatic music would crescendo as we ran towards each other in slow motion, and he’d swing me round and round and round_.

But it’s not a film, and she hauls her own luggage from the carousel. She checks her own watch, and directs her own taxi to the smudged address on the napkin. She watches the fare edge up on the metre, and thinks that maybe Abby can fund just a little bit of her travels after all.

She’s spent the whole trip wishing it would go faster, and now, as the taxi pulls up and she hands over her mother’s money, she wishes time would stop barrelling towards her before she can catch her breath.

But she makes time pause, and she takes a breath until she’s ready.

Because she’s Clarke Griffin, and this time, she’s going to be the one doing the finding.

Fate can do one.

 

******

 

Bellamy’s supposed to be cleaning the Planetarium of rubbish for the show in the morning when he hears the door open and close.

He knows who it is, like breathing. Like instinct. He doesn’t turn round.

‘You know,’ Clarke says, and he stills, ‘lately I’ve been looking at the moon a lot. I know it’s a cliché- Christ, we’re a whole truckload of them- but wherever we’ve been, I’ve always thought we’ve been looking at the same one.’

He says nothing, waiting. His ribs are still bruised from when she socked him in the chest that morning nearly six weeks ago.

‘But I guess,’ she continues, and she walks forward into his field of vision, her hair bleached silver by the moon on the domed screen over their heads but her eyes still that stormy sky blue, ‘you were looking at a different one.’

‘Only recently,’ he says, and he knows she understands. He doesn’t take desertion well.

‘Bellamy,’ she whispers softly, and he feels it raise the hairs on his arms. ‘I’m sorry.’

His gaze on her is steady.

‘I shouldn’t’ve left,’ she admits, and a knot loosens in his chest, the free end reaching out, wanting to anchor in her again. ‘I was scared, and I was panicking, but mostly I was just wrong.’

He carefully puts his cloth down on a chair, and starts to walk towards her. She begins to grin.

‘You should remember me saying that, because it’s not going to happen very often.’

He’s trying to remain stony-faced, but his eyebrow twitches at this.

‘You planning on sticking around then, Princess?’

Her smile is tentative, but bold in her Griffin way. ‘I’ve always wanted to try London.’  

He narrows his eyes, only one more row of chairs between them. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Fate?’ she offers, and laughs when he mock glares at her. ‘Turns out my best friend takes some classes with a girl named Octavia in Paris. Isn’t that the coincidence?’

‘Isn’t it?’ he murmurs, as he reaches her. He sweeps her bag from her shoulder, her hair from her face, and _her_ into his arms.

‘Haven’t you realised yet, Princess? We’re in the stars.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for making it to the end- hope you enjoyed it!   
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated, and feel free to come say hi on tumblr- I'm here-isthedeepestsecret and instars-acrossthesky! :)   
> xxx


End file.
